Many companies and other organizations operate computer networks that interconnect numerous computing systems to support their operations, such as with the computing systems being co-located (e.g., as part of a local network) or instead located in multiple distinct geographical locations (e.g., connected via one or more private or public intermediate networks). For example, data centers housing significant numbers of interconnected computing systems have become commonplace, such as private data centers that are operated by and on behalf of a single organization, and public data centers that are operated by entities as businesses to provide computing resources to customers. Some public data center operators provide network access, power, and secure installation facilities for hardware owned by various customers, while other public data center operators provide “full service” facilities that also include hardware resources made available for use by their customers. However, as the scale and scope of typical data centers has increased, the tasks of provisioning, administering, and managing the physical computing resources have become increasingly complicated.
The advent of virtualization technologies for commodity hardware has provided benefits with respect to managing large-scale computing resources for many customers with diverse needs, allowing various computing resources to be efficiently and securely shared by multiple customers. For example, virtualization technologies may allow a single physical computing machine to be shared among multiple users by providing each user with one or more virtual machines hosted by the single physical computing machine, with each such virtual machine being a software simulation acting as a distinct logical computing system that provides users with the illusion that they are the sole operators and administrators of a given hardware computing resource, while also providing application isolation and security among the various virtual machines. Furthermore, some virtualization technologies are capable of providing virtual resources that span two or more physical resources, such as a single virtual machine with multiple virtual processors that spans multiple distinct physical computing systems.
As the functionality and features supported by providers of virtualized compute, storage and networking resources grows, and as the fleet of hardware platforms that are used by large-scale providers grows, the implementation of administrative control operations on the platforms, such as managing network traffic flows, can itself become fairly complex. In many cases, the functionality and usability of applications run on such platforms may rely extensively on network communications with other parts of the provider network, and/or with external entities such as clients or third parties. In an attempt to achieve the desired application performance levels, the operators of such distributed systems may have typically set up high bandwidth network infrastructures. However, despite the provisioning of high bandwidth networking devices and links, network bandwidth may in many cases become a bottleneck resource, especially given the time-varying and location-dependent bandwidth requirements for many types of deployed applications. Virtualization may make managing network bandwidth (as well as latency and other networking characteristics) an even harder problem, as the various virtual machines being implemented on a single hardware platform may have widely varying networking requirements that have to be met using the platform's shared networking components, and also because the set of applications and virtual machines instantiated at a given hardware platform may change over time.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.